Evaluating the loved one: The motivational congruency factor 1

S ummary As a test of the general hypothesis that the enduring motivations of the individual significantly influence the kind of evaluations he makes of the abilities and attributes of others in a direction congruent with the quality and magnitude of such needs, the evaluative responses of 120 persons constituting 60 engaged dyads were secured, and their needs measured by a modified version of the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule It was predicted that high levels of the needs for affiliation, nurturance, deference, intraception, dominance, succorance, and abasement would influence subjects to rate their partners more highly than persons with lesser magnitudes of these motivations, and that subjects scoring high on the needs for autonomy and aggression would tend to evaluate their loved ones less positively than subjects scoring low on these variables Comparisons in terms of difference scores of high‐ and low‐scoring groups of subjects on each of the 9 motivational characteristics resulted in confirmation of predictions at usually high levels of significance in 15 of the 18 cases. The three comparisons failing to reach the conventional level of significance nevertheless revealed differences which were also in the predicted direction. The findings are interpreted as quite clearly supporting the hypothesized influence of particular motivations in interpersonal evaluations, an effect which has been referred to as the factor of motivational congruency.